Project Management 101

Projects have limited resources (people, money and time) and major risks (due to uncertainty) and you need an approach to deal with all of it. Projects approach are never purely Waterfall or Agile or some other methodology — but normally a mix to suit the organisation. That is OK — as long as you know the background and limitations of method used. Example:

Shortlist of absolute minimum knowledge required by a Project/Team Lead (which can be acquired in a weekend):
- Know basics of Lean enterprise practices (1),(9)
- Be aware of key points of agile frameworks such as Scrum (4)
- Be aware of key components of popular project management methods such as PRINCE2 (5) and PMBOK (6)
- Understand why you are not following recommended practices from Scrum, PRINCE2 and/or PMBOK

Like a story — every project has a Beginning, Middle and End.
The basic project stages and some of the key deliverables (loosely based on PMBOK and PRINCE2) are:

1. Pre-project (Feasibility)
- Project mandate (could even be a 1 pager or just an email)
- Agreement on people required to initiate a project
- Define product description/scope (see “Working Backwards” (3))

What rarely works - Excessive planning (if major uncertainties exists)
- Start the project without key resources
- More than one person responsible for same task
- Microsoft Project

What mostly works - Most projects consist of multiple sub-projects or streams — identify them early on
- Have business/product owner — or more than one if multiple products in the project
- Daily standup/scrum with relevant product owner and delivery team
- Have an up-to-date single list of tasks / issues / product backlog
- Everyone must be aware at all times of high-level project roadmap/plan and their key deliverables
- Every project stage/sprint must not be longer than 4 weeks
- Have regular product demos (e.g. end of every stage/sprint)
- If in doubt, reduce scope (8)

REFERENCES

(1)
Lean Enterprise: How High-Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale
Jez Humble, ‎Joanne Molesky, Barry O'Reilly
This book is a must read! A 110p excerpt is available from publisher website.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449368425/ [amazon.com]